Atul Gawande, M.D., M.P.H.

Atul Gawande is a general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. His research has concentrated on strategies to improve medical performance and public health. He became Director of the World Health Organization's global campaign to reduce surgical deaths in 2007.

Dr. Gawande served as a senior health policy advisor in the Clinton presidential campaign and White House from 1992 to 1993. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine since 1998. In 2006, Dr. Gawande received a MacArthur Award for his research and writing. His nonfiction writing has been selected to appear in the annual Best American Essays collection three times and in Best American Science Writing seven of the last eight years. His book COMPLICATIONS: A SURGEON'S NOTES ON AN IMPERFECT SCIENCE was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2002 and is published in more than 20 languages. His book BETTER: A SURGEON'S NOTES ON PERFORMANCE was a New York Times bestseller and selected as one of the 10 best books of 2007 by Amazon.com and The Sunday Times of London. His most recent book, THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO: HOW TO GET THINGS RIGHT, was a New York Times bestseller and selected as one of the best books of the month for December in 2009 by Amazon.com.